Life Skills Curriculum Results

Arizona Justice Courts

This report was conducted by ACCI’s affiliate in Arizona – Wise Choice Alternatives. This report covers 14 months of referrals from 40 plus justice courts in Arizona. The total number referrals in this report is 1,336. The report highlights a completion rate of 92% and a recidivism rate of 13%.

US Probation North Dakota

This study evaluates a manualized cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) program used with probationers in one Midwestern jurisdiction. The program was adopted to address two important challenges specific to the jurisdiction. First, the manualized course was chosen in order to provide cognitive behavioral therapy in a setting which has a very low population density making group CBT unfeasible. Second, there was an expectation that the narrative format of the manualized course would resonate with the large Native American client pool in the area. Most data were collected for standard record keeping purposes. Criminal thinking was measured using the Texas Christian University Criminal Thinking Scales (TCU-CTS) and offender behavior was measured in four ways: offender non-compliance, new arrests, revocations, and positive drug tests. Records were analyzed for 346 individuals who were on probation on January 1, 2006 or later (treatment group n = 89; dropout group n = 12; no treatment group n = 245). Results provide reason for optimism regarding program effectiveness and direction for future research.

15 Texas County Community Supervision & Corrections Departments

In this report we combined 15 different referring counties for comparison and to obtain a larger sample size. This 26 page report provides combined and county specific results. The overal completion rate was 81.3% and the recidivsim rate was 11.6%.

San Diego County Probation Pilot Study

A small test of change was put in place to identify the level of effectiveness of ACCI’s Home Study Program with medium risk level felony offenders in San Diego County. 62 probationers were referred, 88% of them successfully completed their assigned life skills course and 8% had committed a new violation and only one probationer who completed was sent to prison.

Oklahoma State Probation & Parole

This report covers 28 months (April 2010 – August 2012) of referrals from officers in OK DOC AP&P submitted to ACCI’s Home Study Program. During this period of time there were 747 total referrals. 86% of probationers and parolees successfully completed their assigned home study course and of those that did complete 5% have returned to incarceration to date.

Arizona State Parole

This report covers 2 1/2 years (March 2009 – September 2011) of referrals from Arizona State Parole Officers to ACCI’s Home Study Program. During this period of time, ACCI received 2,859 referrals. 70% of parolees successfully completed their assinged cognitive life skills course and of those that did complete 10% returned to prison.

Box Elder County, Utah

This is a 3 year study that tracked every substance abuse offender in the Box Elder County jurisdiction. Every offender was court ordered to take ACCI’s Substance Abuse Home Study Course. A 15 point evidence based criteria was used to demonstrate a reduction in crime in this jurisdiction. After 3 years, this court experienced a 57% reduction in substance abuse court filings on a monthly basis. Meanwhile, adjacent counties who did not use ACCI’s Substance Abuse Home Study Course either remained the same or increased the number of offenders coming to court for substance abuse offenses.

Bastrop County, Texas

This study tracked recidivism for 8 years. From January 1991 to November 2000 every hot check writer was court ordered to take ACCI’s Bad Check class. During this time 77% of offenders completed the class and 3.2% repeated the same offense. Before this class was instituted, this jurisdiction experienced a recidivism rate of 52%.